USA President, Joe Biden has said the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is "real", days after denouncing Russia's deployment of such weapons in Belarus.
Last
week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country has
started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of
which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The deployment
is Russia's first move of such warheads - shorter-range, less powerful
nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield - outside Russia
since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The United States has said
it has no intention of altering its stance on strategic nuclear weapons
in response to the deployment and has not seen any signs that Russia is
preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
On Saturday, Biden called Putin's announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus "absolutely irresponsible".
But on Monday, June 19 while talking to group of donors in California, he said the nuclear threat is real.
"When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy," Biden said.
"They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It's real."
The
Russian deployment of nuclear weapons is being watched closely by the
United States and its allies as well as by China, which has repeatedly
cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
